Re: [gentoo-dev] Proper distribution integration of kernel *-sources, patches and configuration.

[Mike Pagano]

On Monday, July 01, 2013 01:52:10 PM Rick Zero_Chaos Farina wrote:
> On 07/01/2013 01:35 PM, Tom Wijsman wrote:
> > On Mon, 01 Jul 2013 12:20:09 -0400
> >
> > "Rick \"Zero_Chaos\" Farina" <zerochaos@g.o> wrote:
> >> Some patches are reasonably easy to combine, such as genpatches and
> >> aufs.  Some patches are difficult to combine, such as hardened and *.
> >> When you combine hardened patches and aufs (for example) you need
> >> extra patches.  I would be THRILLED to see the number of sources cut
> >> down, but hardened-sources must be it's own thing (that said, I'll
> >> personally maintain the aufs patches for hardened if they wanted to
> >> add a USE=aufs flag).
> >
> > Yes, gave it as an quick example but I indeed remember from going
> > through the sources ebuilds that hardened ebuilds do quite some things.
> > I think the downside from extending genpatches is that hardened-sources
> > can no longer rely on it, but we'll have to see that as we go forward.
> >
> > I don't think that apart from hardened the optional patches on their own
> > are hard to combine; they each have their own separate goal, I don't
> > see them conflict on anything. If it happens once in a while, we can
> > still maintain them to work together.
>
> Hardened has K_WANT_GENPATCHES="base" which means it already doesn't
> take the extra patches.  We could either introduce a new flag for your
> patches like K_WANT_GENPATCHES="base extra geek" or more likely make
> each one with their own name so that hardened et al can take what they
> like and leave the rest.

Ok, so I have talked to Tom about this on IRC and it's probably prudent to 
chime in.  I have gotten many complaints in the past that there is not enough 
in g-s, and, of course, I've gotten complaints about there being too much.

I have 'relaxed' a tad about what I think should be in g-s, but maybe it has 
gone a bit farther than I wanted it too.

I would like to see a "-experimental" use flag and base,extras,geek (whatever) 
so that g-s goes back to what it's original goal was with nothing non-upstream 
unless the user does a configuration change themselves.

This will actually help us solve both issues.

1) it will allow us to pull g-s back to it's original goal as  a minimal 
kernel sources with upstream only patches.
2) we can carry some patches from upstreams trees that possibly aren't yet in 
-next, or not yet accepted to mainline but do provide some benefit to a smaller 
group of our users. (Thinking about our thinkpad patches)


-- 
Mike Pagano
Gentoo Developer - Kernel Project
E-Mail     : mpagano@g.o
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